Tag Archives: rebel base

The great great Anika Balaconis has done it again with Far Cry #9, the biggest little speculative fiction zine in the scene, published while she’s not punking down and running her own restaurant in Greenfield, Massachusetts.

Authors Andrew Massey, Jean Paul Garnier (namesake of the condoms and glowsticks on the cover) and Joe Urson are featured besides Anika’s own story, and she put one of my stories in too!!! Audio version of the latter here for those of you too busy, too nonprofit or too ‘post-literate’ to read. Cover artist London Roman also has an illustration in the back, like a single page from a longer comic, to round it out.

The cover image also gets my approval for featuring the west coast, and a punker wailing on a guitar. Get on Far Cry, or find Éxitos Gnosis, and get yourself a copy today while they last!

Far Cry, the furthest-out literature zine from western Massachusetts, is now available! This digest-size (half-sheet) zine is the perfect home for not-normy writers and those who read them.

Volume 7, published by Anika Balaconis when she’s not running her restaurant and playing punk rock in Greenfield, has five stories. Two of them feel like sketches, or pieces of something a lot bigger. Balaconis’ story The Book of Heroes, for example, took two reads to understand, not because it was really dense, but because the narrator was building up some compelling stuff. It belongs to a much bigger story.

Probably the best story in terms of characters, plot, technique that makes for resonance and enjoyment, is the final story Ages of the Dome by J.D. Hairston. He’s the cook and Anika’s partner at the Brass Buckle. Their band together is called Rebel Base. They both seem like rad people. I’ll have to sneak into the landing gear of an airplane going to Massachusetts and take my chances burrowing to Greenfield.

Ages of the Dome is about a kid who lives in a bubble on a planet Earth convalescing from (probably) ecological catastrophe, and he visits his dad to watch him die with a final high-five, taking all the knowledge of the world before catastrophe, all the lifespan that the new kids won’t live, with him. It hit a lot of stuff I’ve been thinking about, and the characters were executed clean for a tiny 1,000-word story. I hope to read more of his stuff soon.

Anika was kind enough to put one of mine in, too, which also had an ecological theme. This made me happy because I wrote it to order (yuck) for another zine who ended up not using it. Hit the website to order yours today!